President denies he governs with neo-liberalism concept

Jakarta, NU Online
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono denied allegations that he had been applying a neo-liberalism economic concept to his government over the past five years.

"We do not adopt neo-liberalism. Many people talk about neo-liberalism but they do not understand what it is," he said when he spoke to a dialog organized by the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) here on Wednesday.<>

He said that his government never adopted neo-liberalism economy which left all economic policies to develop based on the development of market mechanism.

The president said in the past five years of his government, his administration had carried out many market interventions without merely leaving the problem to business players, particularly multinational companies.

Yudhoyono has been accused of adopting neo-liberalism since he was nominated as a presidential aspirant and picked Bank Indonesia (BI) Governor Boediono as his running mate in the upcoming July 9, 2009 presidential race.

The head of state appealed to the public not to accuse himself as an advocate of neo-liberalism while they actually did not understand what it was.

He said he was not a man who only wanted to achieve economic growth as high as possible but ignoring equitable distribution that could be enjoyed by the people.

Yudhoyono also stressed that he did not believe the economic theory of trickle down effect where economic growth would start from the upper class and then trickle down to the people of lower economic class.

"That does not work in developing countries. In the future there should be no longer a growth in part but in other part there people are only waiting for assistance," he was quoted by Antara news agency as saying.

At the end of the dialog, Yudhoyono also stressed he was not one of those who were ultra-nationalists who translate nationalism into a narrow sense, but he was not either included in those who advocate neo-liberalism.(dar)